Guests

2018 Guests

Gregor Fisher
A well-loved Scottish comedian and actor, Gregor is perhaps best known for his long-running portrayal as a philosophical Glasgow alcoholic in the TV series Rab C. Nesbitt. He has also worked widely in film, notably in those...

Molly Dineen
One of Britain's most acclaimed documentary filmmakers, Molly is known for her intimate and probing portraits of British individuals and institutions. Her work includes The Lie of the Land (2007) examining the decline of...

Jackie Kay
Jackie is one of Scotland’s finest writers. She has published six collections of poetry for adults (her first, The Adoption Papers, won the Scottish Arts Council Book Award) and several for children, along with an award-...

Michael Radford
Michael is no stranger to Cromarty. He directed his first feature, Another Time, Another Place,
here in the town and its surrounds. Since those early days he has directed such critically acclaimed films as White Mischief...

Callum Macrae
Callum is a film-maker and writer whose work often deals with human rights agendas and frequently focuses on the voiceless and marginalised. An Emmy, BAFTA and Grierson nominee, he headed the Channel Four team nominated in ...

Gary Pollard
Gary Pollard is a film sculptor and artist of over 30 years’ experience. His career began with Jim Henson’s Creature Shop on Labyrinth and Little Shop of Horrors. Specialising in sci-fi and fantasy, he has gone o...

Cat Bruce
Cat is an award-winning animator and director, born and raised in Carrbridge and based in Edinburgh. She studied animation at Edinburgh College of Art and won a Scottish BAFTA for No Place like Home (2016). Cat has also worked ...

Keith Duncan
Keith is musician, vocalist, sound engineer and sound designer who runs a thriving studio in Edinburgh’s Summerhall, designing sound for live action, animation, music promos and documentary. His work has screened at ev...

Christo Hird
Christo is a leading figure in UK independent documentary-making. With Dartmouth Films, he has pioneered new ways of funding, producing and distributing documentaries in the UK as well as promoting the work of new and emergi...

Matt Lloyd
Our shorts screenings become more popular every year, primarily because of the careful curation by Matt from the Glasgow Short Film Festival. He’ll be presenting selections of international and Scottish shorts, and also ...

Lawrence Sutcliffe
Lawrence is our Doctor of Film. He knows more about sprockets than most. This year, Lawrence has trawled the film bins for some more couthy, camp nonsense, and archive gems. When has he ever failed us?

2017 Guests

Jason Connery
Jason is an actor and director, well known for his role as Robin Hood in the mid-eighties. He has gone on to star in a myriad of roles and is now directing feature films. We will be showing Tommy’s Honour which Jason ...

Rex Pyke
Rex has been immersed in the film industry all his life. An editor, a director, a producer, Rex was responsible for project managing and creating the wonderful Akenfield. He was stupid enough to employ Don Coutts, but only once!...

Margaret Matheson
Margaret is one of the UK’s most highly thought of film producers. The “go to” problem solver. She has produced a huge body of work, from Abigail’s Party to Scum to Sid and Nancy to Katie Morag. ...

Orla O'Connor
Orla is one of the most active and creative casting directors working out of Scotland. A daughter of Ireland and all that that entails! Orla has recently been responsible for casting Shetland, Iona, What We Did On Our...

Mike Day
Mike Day is a Scottish director and cinematographer. Mike was listed as one of '10 Filmmakers To Watch in 2012', by Independent Filmmaker magazine. Mike is showing his second documentary The Islands and The Whales which...

Christo Hird
Christopher Hird is a leading figure in UK independent documentary-making. With Dartmouth Films he has pioneered new ways of funding, producing and distributing documentaries in the UK, as well as promoting the work of new a...

Iain Smith
Producer of numerous Hollywood hits, Iain is the most constructively critical and articulate member of the Scottish film community. A great practitioner and thoughtful man, we are very grateful for his guiding hand and attenda...

Karen Krizanovich
Karen has been a supporter of the festival for years. We are grateful for her support. She is a great journalist, critic, and cultural commentator. Karen is going to run a screening about the role of women in the film i...

Allan Mackay
Allan is the Gaelic and Acquisitions Curator at the swanky new National Library of Scotland Moving Image Archive. Well worth a visit if you are in Glasgow - or online. Every year, he packs his boot with interesting tapes f...

Matt Lloyd
Our Shorts screenings become moe popular every year, primarily because of the careful curation of Matt from the Glasgow Short Film Festival. Join us for a dram on the opening evening at the Lighthouse to watch some brilliant ...

Ross Hogg
Ross is an animation filmmaker based in Edinburgh. Ross focuses on creating dexterous, hand-crafted animation using a variety of materials celebrating the vibrancy and physicality of the medium. He recently added to his colle...

Will Anderson & Ainslie Henderson
Will is a BAFTA winning writer/director, and to top it off, he's from just along the road in Alcaig. Will got off to a pretty good start when his first short film ‘The Making of Longbird&rs...

2016 Guests

Iain Smith
As perennial as the Cromarty Rose: Iain and his partner Karen Krizanovich have been coming to CFF, supporting and helping us with ideas and suggestions for years. Thanks for that! Iain is undoubtedly the most high profile Scot...

Kevin Macdonald
It’s not surprising that Kevin ended up in the film industry as a creative and well reviewed director, his maternal Grandfather was the famous producer/director Emeric Pressburger. Unusually, Kevin has moved comfort...

Jenny Beavan
How wonderful to welcome Jenny to Cromarty! She is a BAFTA and Oscar winning costume designer, famously causing a Twitter storm after being called ‘a bag lady’ by Stephen Fry at the BAFTAs. Jenny has an extraordi...

Jon Snow
Thank goodness for Channel 4 News presenter Jon Snow. His news programmes are often a beacon of hope in the trough of tv news and opinion. His enthusiasm and knowledge shine through the screen and make it almost palatable to hea...

Christopher Hird
Unwittingly, radical producer and journalist Christopher Hird has joined the Cromarty Film Festival as a returning guest. Welcome again Christo and thanks for your support. Christo first came to Cromarty to show a wonder...

Andy Harris
Andy Harris is one of those creative and generous people who have been sharing their talent and expertise within the Scottish film industry for a long time now! As production designer it’s Andy’s job to interpret ...

Michel Faber
Although originally born in The Hague, Michel has been living in Scotland for the last twenty-five years. Michel rightly sees himself as a man of no particular nationality although we are proud of his connection to the Highl...

Robin Haig
We are delighted to welcome Robin Haig, the director and co-writer of Hula, the BAFTA winning short who will be here to screen her film and chat with Lawrence about it. Starring Bly- the Duff it was largely shot in and around ...

Matt Lloyd
Every year our Shorts screening is becoming increasingly popular. This is due to our relationship with Matt who amongst other things is programmer for the Glasgow Short Film Festival. We have found a larger venue to please our...

Lawrence Sutcliffe
Lawrence is our very own, Inverness based, Professor of Film and Grand Wizard of Cinema! Lawrence has an encyclopædic knowledge of cinema from the obscure to the even more obscure. Each year Lawrence programmes o...

Allan Mackay
For the last ten years Allan Mackay from Scottish Screen Archive has been struggling up the a9 with a wee box of archive delights. This year is no different. Thank you Allan for your loyalty and support.

Drew Wright aka Wounded Knee & Hamish Brown
Drew is a singer-songwriter, musician and experimental vocalist and has worked with Hamish, a composer, producer and musician, to compose the recently acclaimed soundtrack to the silent doc...

2015 Guests

Perhaps best known for her role of Ella Cotter in Rab C Nesbit. Barbara is a consummate actress on television/film and theatre. She started her career as Woman feeding baby in a graveyard in the cult film The Wicker Man. Since then she ...

Iain Smith
Iain Smith comes from Glasgow and graduated from the London Film School in 1971. He worked in London for several years before returning to Scotland to make My Childhood, the first of the award winning trilogy by the late Bill ...

Ian Stephen
Ian Stephen was born in Stornoway in 1955, and still lives there. His poetry and short stories have been published internationally since 1979. His first poetry collection was Malin Hebrides Minches, a collaboration with the p...

Bob Last
Bob first worked in the music business establishing the label Fast Product. This brought Human League and the Mekons to prominence in the post-punk era of the late seventies. He went on to manage abc and Heaven 17 through the ei...

Karen Krizanovich
Karen has been a friend and supporter of the Festival for the last few years. She is a writer, journalist, researcher and broadcaster, voice-over artist, and at one point, she was even an agony aunt in a popular magazin...

Christopher Hird
Christopher Hird established Dartmouth Films in 2008 to pioneer new ways of funding, making and distributing independent documentaries and supporting the work of new and emerging filmmakers. His previous career had inclu...

Andrew Jackson
Andrew Jackson is well known for his work on 300 (2006), Knowing (2009), and Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) amongst other films.
In Mad Max Fury Road, Jackson was aided by a team of highly skilled digital effects people, wi...

Will Anderson
Will Anderson is a BAFTA winning Writer/Director and Animator from the Scottish Highlands. Currently living in Edinburgh, Will specialises in design & character animation for film and television. Will has worked in many...

Matt Lloyd
Matt Lloyd has directed Glasgow Short Film Festival for seven years, in which time it has grown from a modest two day event into Scotland’s leading international short film festival. He was short film programmer of Edinb...

Lawrence Sutcliffe
Lawrence is the Highland Council's Film Officer, offering advice and support to film, television and commercial projects wishing to shoot in the Highlands. His interest in film is also a personal one and he graduat...

Duncan Cowles
His short films The Lady with the Lamp, Soft Toffee, Radio Silence and Directed by Tweedie have been selected for various film festivals at home and internationally.
Duncan was recently nominated for a BAFTA Scotland New...

Andy Mackinnon
Filmaker Andy Mackinnon has been living on North Uist for 15 years. He originally went to work with Lochmaddy Arts Centre, Taigh Chearsabhagh on a collaborative Documentary feature called Passing Places. He just stayed!
...

2014 Guests

Bill Forsyth
Probably the man most credited for having put modern Scottish cinema on the International film stage. Bill was originally a Documentary Film-maker and now known for his quirky off-beat features.
Director of a catalogue of...

Iain Smith
Iain Smith comes from Glasgow and graduated from the London Film School
in 1971. He worked in London for several years before returning to Scotland
to make My Childhood, the first of the award winning trilogy by the late...